March 25, 2013 at 9:43 am
Jim P. (3/23/2013)
But the flip side of all this story -- what will be left behind a hundred, let alone a thousand years from now? We can still decode the data left on the pyramids at Giza. Will anyone be able to still read the data left on your hard drives? :ermm:
Thanks Jim, you made me think of Spock and Bones when they use to comment on how things were done in the 21st century. Some will look at today's data and laugh and others cry. One because they are amazed we were able to accomplish what we did with the simple tools we have now, and other will cry because of the mistakes we made and the diversions we took.
But they will look. Unless the Apes seal it all off from us and put it in the forbidden zone. 🙂
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
March 25, 2013 at 10:33 am
Jim P. (3/23/2013)
. . . But the flip side of all this story -- what will be left behind a hundred, let alone a thousand years from now? We can still decode the data left on the pyramids at Giza. Will anyone be able to still read the data left on your hard drives? :ermm:
Will anyone care what we left on our hard drives? Does anyone care what is punched in the cards that were processed 50 years ago and which are, in some cases, still in storage?
March 25, 2013 at 10:48 am
Revenant (3/25/2013)
Will anyone care what we left on our hard drives? Does anyone care what is punched in the cards that were processed 50 years ago and which are, in some cases, still in storage?
What about the Diary of Anne Frank? What about the writings of MLK? What about the writings of the shyster politicians? What about the rest of books, movies, of popular culture?
A lot of it is waste of space, but it might not hurt to see history so that it isn't repeated.
----------------
Jim P.
A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
March 25, 2013 at 10:59 am
Revenant (3/25/2013)
Jim P. (3/23/2013)
Will anyone care what we left on our hard drives? Does anyone care what is punched in the cards that were processed 50 years ago and which are, in some cases, still in storage?
Yes, you bet. Historians love this kind of stuff. Just look at the excitement every time a new document is found from Bach, or Newton, or Picasso. I am not saying the some day the "Dead Sea Harddrives" will be something that changes history, but there are those who are interested in almost anything.
And not to tee up those who bad mouth the government funding odd or irregular projects, but if the US government will fund research to see how frisbees fly they will one day pay for someone to research old spinning disk technology or how Holllerith card readers really worked. And the feds will probably fund it to the tune of a hundred and fifty million over 20 years and not bat an eye at it.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
March 25, 2013 at 11:02 am
Good point but the writings of Frank or King were one offs and of value from the start. Important information will migrate to new storage methods so it is accessible. I think it will be a rare occurance to find a masterwork on a 5 1/4.
Cheers
March 25, 2013 at 3:45 pm
jfogel (3/25/2013)
Good point but the writings of Frank or King were one offs and of value from the start. Important information will migrate to new storage methods so it is accessible. I think it will be a rare occurance to find a masterwork on a 5 1/4.
An original manuscript or letter written on paper, the only copy in existence, can be discovered centuries after it was written and it's significance immediately understood.
Likewise it's also possible for a single copy of a manuscript to exist on a 5.25 floppy or Zip Disk laying around in the trunk of a deceased author, but an old floppy is not readily accessible and so most people would dismiss it as junk.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
March 25, 2013 at 9:48 pm
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Eric M Russell (3/25/2013)
jfogel (3/25/2013)
Good point but the writings of Frank or King were one offs and of value from the start. Important information will migrate to new storage methods so it is accessible. I think it will be a rare occurance to find a masterwork on a 5 1/4.An original manuscript or letter written on paper, the only copy in existence, can be discovered centuries after it was written and it's significance immediately understood.
Likewise it's also possible for a single copy of a manuscript to exist on a 5.25 floppy or Zip Disk laying around in the trunk of a deceased author, but an old floppy is not readily accessible and so most people would dismiss it as junk.
You may wish to note that the originally guaranteed retention period for a 5.25 floppy was five years. Will you please tell me, with a justification, what is the chance that anyone, not just most people, can discover its academic significance AND DISMISS IT AS JUNK, a mere 100 years after it was buried in a landfill, possibly with ferromagnetic media around?
(This is also an indirect response to the previous posts that mention Egyptian hieroglyphics carved into a stone.)
Edit: making the landfill point stronger.
March 26, 2013 at 4:21 am
jfogel (3/25/2013)
Good point but the writings of Frank or King were one offs and of value from the start. Important information will migrate to new storage methods so it is accessible. I think it will be a rare occurance to find a masterwork on a 5 1/4.
I'm afraid I disagree. Given how many Jewish children were murdered in the war years, Anne Frank's diary is tragically highly unlikely to have been a one-off. Moreover, despite its literary merit, it only became valuable to the rest of the world once the world wanted to make a statement about Nazi atrocities, so it was hardly of value "from the start".
In the good old tradition of "what-iffing", if Germany had won the war, Anne Frank's diary would either never have been published or would have had to wait decades (even centuries) before prevailing opinion modified enough for it to become acceptable. On the flip side, we might have been arguing that Hitler's "Mein Kampf" was a one-off and of value from the start instead of the reality now where most see it as a historical oddity of interest only because of the extreme infamy of its author.
I'd agree it will be a rare occurrence to find a masterpiece on a floppy disc, but then it's a rare occurrence to find a masterpiece anywhere. In this digital age, it's going to become (IMHO) increasingly likely that valuable discoveries will be made on old digital media.
Semper in excretia, suus solum profundum variat
March 26, 2013 at 5:43 am
How many of you maintain machines with an 8", 5 1/4, 3.5, Jazz and Zip drives?
Cheers
March 26, 2013 at 9:44 am
jfogel (3/26/2013)
How many of you maintain machines with an 8", 5 1/4, 3.5, Jazz and Zip drives?
Not going to argue that things like this are rare but when you see an IBM 360/20 or a System 3 Mod 6 for sale on EBAY and three or four people are bidding you got to wonder.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
March 26, 2013 at 10:47 am
Some just like to play with the past. I bought a mint Apple IIC on EBay for that very reason and I'm sure some have a more productive reason for such purposes. For me, I just make it a point to migrate important things to newer media so I'm never worried about what is on an old disk or disc. I don't like clutter.
Cheers
March 27, 2013 at 8:45 am
jfogel (3/26/2013)
How many of you maintain machines with an 8", 5 1/4, 3.5, Jazz and Zip drives?
I've had all of those, have media, and currently have none of those drives in the house. Not sure I care as most of the stuff I had was code that has been superseded.
However it does make me wonder how many things won't make sense in a generation to people. Why do we start with a "C:" drive? Movies that use floppy drives for transport will alien to many people.
March 27, 2013 at 9:07 am
I watched the Phil Spector movie on HBO Sunday night (it was terrible by the way) and in one scene a lawyer is talking about how a jury wont care about his success as a producer from so many years ago. To demonstrate this she pulls out an old 45 and an adapter to allow it to play on a turn table using a different speed. She asks a young lawyer what he thinks it is and the response is that it is an old computer disk. My oldest daughter asked me if we had color when I was a kid. I said sure, color film has been around for many years. No, did we see in color? she asked. Now that was funny.
C: is the default because it was assumed that floppy drives would take A and B and I recall early digital cameras that used floppy disks for storage. I don't have any of the devices I mentioned in my prior post and so far life has been just fine without them. Soon enough optical media will be added to that list.
Cheers
March 27, 2013 at 9:58 am
It's just funny to see it in media. I use records in a talk and once in awhile I meet someone that has no idea what they are.
As it is, I hope that we get away from C:, d:, etc. I try to avoid them in code where I can. I've been without a Cd/DVD drive in a laptop for 3 years. Just ordered a new one without one as well.
March 27, 2013 at 10:20 am
My last two laptops didn't come with them as well. I buy Lenovo X Series machines and since they are small there is no room. I do buy the docking station for them but the UltraBay always has a second hard drive in it. I find myself having to burn DVDs rather then read them so I connect that to a eSATA PC Express card when needed. That is rare though.
Cheers
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